http://bigstory.ap.org/article/19d494bcbe194771864bc3961bb1498c/fears-trump-drive-immigrants-become-citizens
>MIAMI (AP) — On a recent Saturday morning in South Florida, 50-year-old Edgar Ospina stood in a long line of immigrants to take the first step to become an American.
>Ospina has spent almost half his life in the U.S. after emigrating from his native Colombia, becoming eligible for citizenship in 1990. But with Donald Trump becoming a more likely presidential nominee by the day, Ospina decided to wait no more, rushing the paperwork required to become a citizen.
>"Trump is dividing us as a country," said Ospina, owner of a small flooring and kitchen remodeling company. "He's so negative about immigrants. We've got to speak up."
>Nationwide, immigrants like Ospina are among tens of thousands applying for naturalization in a year when immigration has taken center stage in the presidential campaign, especially in the race for the Republican nomination.
>Trump, the GOP front-runner, has pledged to deport the estimated 11 million people living in the U.S. illegally. He's also vowed to bar Muslims from entering the country and threatened to cut off remittances that Mexican immigrants in the U.S. send back home. And he's called for building a border wall — among other proposals to deal with unlawful immigration, saying the federal government has failed to protect the border from people and drugs illegally entering the country.
>That rhetoric, immigrant advocates and lawmakers say, is driving many foreign-born residents to seek citizenship.
>"There is fear of a Trump presidency," said Maria Ponce of iAmerica Action, a Washington-based immigrant rights group that is teaming up with other organizations to help those seeking citizenship — part of a national campaign called "Stand Up To Hate." They've sponsored naturalization workshops from Washington state to Nebraska and Massachusetts.
>Nationwide, naturalization applications are up 14 percent in the last six months of 2015 compared with the same period in 2014, according to the government.
>And the pool of future U.S. citizens is large. Nearly 9 million legal permanent residents, or green-card holders, are eligible to become Americans. Of those, about 4 million are Hispanic.
>Rep. Luis Gutiérrez, D-Ill., was featured in a public service announcement encouraging immigrants to become citizens so they can vote in November. He mocked Trump's slogan, suggesting it was really: "Make America Hate Again."
>"We've seen it in the past and we are seeing it again many times over this year," he said. "When immigrant communities feel they are under attack they react with a large number of eligible immigrants becoming citizens and a large number of eligible citizens becoming voters."
>Erica Bernal of the National Association of Latino Elected Officials said the tenor of the presidential campaign is galvanizing Latino immigrants. She said today's movement is reminiscent of the 1990s when Latinos in California rose up against Proposition 187, which sought to deny government services to those in the state illegally. The courts overturned it.
>Her group and several local ones in Los Angeles recently launched a regional campaign to encourage Latino immigrants to become citizens. About 775,000 legal immigrants in the L.A. area are eligible for citizenship.
>To qualify, immigrants must have been in the country five years, complete a 21-page application, get fingerprinted, pass a civics and English exam and pay almost $700 in fees.
>Ivan Parra, citizenship coordinator with the Florida Immigrant Coalition said immigrants laugh when he asks why they want to become Americans.
>"'You know why,' they say, 'I want to vote against racism and hate,'" said Parra.
>He says immigrants this year are "desperate to be part of the political process."
>Maria Cristina Giraldo, originally from Colombia and already a U.S. citizen, said she is so fearful of Trump becoming president that she brought five relatives to a naturalization workshop in South Florida.
>"Trump is anti-immigrant," said Giraldo, who works cleaning houses. "I don't know if it's because he's such a brute in his speeches or that he isn't careful in what he's saying, but he's very nasty toward Hispanics."
>Her sister, Gladys Ceballos of Hollywood, Florida, agreed. She's trying for the second time to become a citizen after failing to pass the English exam. She says she's not fearful of Trump, but she doesn't trust him.
>John Haughton, 66, a Jamaican immigrant, said: "Trump is a man who would say one thing today and may modify his views tomorrow."
>"I want my voice heard," said Haughton, a legal permanent resident since 2008.
>Seung Baik, 43, who was born in South Korea and brought to the U.S. as a teenager, said he too believes Trump is too divisive.
>"It took me a little longer to become a citizen because I didn't want to apply and treat this as a membership to something, like joining a club," said Baik, a church pastor. "The world and this nation are changing, and my vote matters."
>Baik said he won't be registering as a Democrat or Republican but remains independent. He's undecided about whom he will vote for in his first presidential election as a U.S. citizen, but "it won't be Donald Trump."
>>42242
All the Trump supporters I know keep insisting that immigrants are going to jump on the Trump Train vs Hillary because of the way Bill Clinton treated them in the 90s.
Didn't take a genius to figure this out.
Trump is gonna drive hispanic voting percentages to an all time high.
This could come back to bite him in the ass.
There are quite a lot of spics here in North Carolina. We are pretty much on our way to becoming a purple state already. Wonder if we will go blue this election.
>>42248
Are they worried about that?
Hispanics are growing in large numbers.
In a decade Texas will become purple and then it's over.
North Carolina abd Virginia already are.
>Be me
>Latino
>Learned Spanish for 3 years at school to speak with folks
>Ff 3 years
>President Trump in office
>All relatives gone except me
>"Fuck. I knew I should've taken ASL!"
>>42242
>>"Trump is dividing us as a country," said Ospina
>"us"
>He's not a citizen
What do you mean "us?"
>>42248
As if, I'm Latino, hate the witch (not voting trump don't get the idea) but Latinos and Blacks are thick as fuck and will keep voting hillary.
>>42243
Theyre afraid that the laws theyre breaking might actually be enforced.
Act like trump is terrible for doing so. These people are devoid of reality
The reality is we need immigrants to function as a heavily capitalist economy. Who's going to take over their jobs when they get deported? I know I'm not going to be mowing lawns and washing dishes. Besides, immigration into the US has been declining the past 5 years due to better opportunities in countries like China and India.
>>42332
>Who's going to take over their jobs when they get deported?
It's not going to be the entitlement-seaking Trump supporters. Dignity and work ethic are beneath them.
>>42242
>owns a business as a non citizen
why is this allowed? anyway, far from dividing them he's uniting the country by making people choose; become American or GTFO.
>>42350
Amazing what they can do.
A new mexican grocery store just opened up nearby.
Strange. Since they are already 3 others within a few miles.
>>42344
>>42332
pfffft. the lower class are the ones voting for him, the ones who lost those jobs in the first place because they were undercut. why is it so important to you that rich white people in arizona are able to pay someone to do their yardwork rather than doing it themselves? You know what happens when there aren't enough people to fill jobs? unemployment goes down, for one. for another, companies have to become more competitive, so wages and benefits go up.
you are prioritizing the corporate bottom line over the american worker and calling them hateful for trying to protect themselves from outsourcing.
>>42352
Immigrants do more than yard work in Arizona, friend. Unscrupulous, nanny state populist blowhards cite their services as essential in the hotel business. Un-automated agriculture depends on them. If Trump drives the Mexicans out, big agriculture will take the Trump tax cuts and automate, hotels will shutter on account of the exchange rate, and low skill domestics can look forward to languishing on remittances from their nephew sent to work in China after a notional president Trump ended social security disability for lifestyle diseases.
>>42332
It'll be like after the bubonic plauge, labor will be more valued, at least until the Robots take over.
Since when could non citizens vote?
>>42372
so what's the issue? businesses will shutter before paying a fair wage? this was acceptable when we were talking about a new minimum wage, so why not the current one?
>>42352
Look up "skilled labor gap" .
There are plenty of jobs out there but educators lack incentives to interact regularly with employers because of the metrics that are used to evaluate post-secondary education. They emphasize enrollment levels and graduation rates, rather than employment in a field of study or the average time to graduation.
My own solution is for high schools to highly encourage apprenticeships out of high school or military service of some sort.
>>42466
Trump can't strattle a line between labor rights and deficit ballooning tax cuts outside of the Republican primary. If he tries Hillary will punish the hell out of him.
>>42473
who are you trying to convince champ? we say immigrants are bed for domestic workers, and you prance around with campaign strategies and claims that trump supporters dont actually want jobs. So why are they voting for him?
>>42476
1. I don't support Trump.
2. The Great America™ worker doesn't exist.
3. Trump is selling the brand, not the substance
Trump's policies are insolvent on the issue. His supporters are Luddites and doomed to unemployability.
You're telling me Trump is against immigration when he's spoken out positively about it at his rallies multiple times?
I seriously don't get the idea these people have about illegal immigration. If you're not allowed to actually enforce your border, what's the point of having it illegal? Do they want an open border policy or something? That way, their beloved Middle America can bleed dry and they can all come over there and fuck up the US like they did their home country.
>>42471
>My own solution is for high schools to highly encourage apprenticeships out of high school
I agree. From my own experience, it's possible to be an effective employee in a knowledge field having only skills learned prior to college. (I got a programming internship/job after my first year of college, so my only formal qualifications were "got into a university with a good CS program and took the intro course there". My real qualifications were "self-taught before going there". I continued working with them until I graduated.)
My internship was really an apprenticeship: the company gave me enough of a salary to cover everything I needed for college, I was able to learn far more than I could by just taking CS 30XX SOFTWARE ENGINEERING, it looked good for the company and the university, I wrote software that people are willing to pay money for, everyone benefited. It's a damn shame that most internships are scams, that most students don't [think they] have time to get real-world experience, etc.
North Carolina here, we have way too many immigrants and nobody who can understand what they're saying.
>>42485
Heard you guys are slowly turning blue like virginia.
>>42481
Is programming in a professional environment really that easy?
>>42243
>When prop 187 got overturned.
Rageface.gif
That was the last chance to save California back when there was still some places left that were cool. We voted for it in droves and one judge said fuck you inforcing laws I don't like is racist. That ruined the state and this cunt is bragging about it. Fuck you America doesn't owe illegals or their sympathizers a god damn thing.
>>42449
Since it became racist to require an ID.
>>42515
It depends on how you define professional. Do you sell $0.99 phone apps? Do you plan on your software lasting over a year? 50% of the time you outsource software jobs to India, you get back un-commented buggy trash. But apparently that's okay if you can pay 25% of American wages.
>>42479
> Luddites
> doomed to unemployability
*tips fedora*
>>42493
Not as fast as those blue people in West Virginia.
Hope Trump wins. Dumb poor people continue voting Dem and they just get poorer and dumber. The Republican party isn't winning GE again with the EC map unless Trump expands the map.
>Trump gets Immigrants to legally acquire citizenship before even elected
>This is supposed to be a bad thing
>>42587
And here I thought virginia and west virginia were republican strongholds.
>>42596
Trump will be fine. He has a gold plated tower to head back to. If Trump keeps turning out the vote that's great.
I'm more worried about the many claims of voter fraud that have plagued the Dem primary moving over to the General.
>>42600
Alright anon.
It'll just beak my heart if one of these guys loses.
I mean it's not like they are rich and powerful or anything :(
>>42601
r u retreaded?
>>42603
I think that is sarcasm.
Just a thought.
>>42352
Keked.
Please see Alabama for their failed anti-immigrant experiment.
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/undocumented-workers-immigration-alabama
http://business.time.com/2012/09/21/bitter-harvest-u-s-farmers-blame-billion-dollar-losses-on-immigration-laws/
>>42351
Their shit is probably organic too.
>>42611
who'd have thought, they build their business around low income workers and then then couldn't afford to provide a proper wage as a result. what is this supposed to prove?
> their efforts to recruit skilled labor, mostly undocumented immigrants, have come up woefully short
maybe they should be aiming for teenagers instead of illegals?
>(MORE: Why Undocumented Workers Are Good for the Economy)
so we've established that both your sources are pretty much retarded.
I'll ask again, the argument that businesses not willing to pay a fair wage should go under was valid in the case of raising the minimum wage, why is it not here? You think these people are getting $15 an hour? hell no, they are conversely actually assuring nobody else gets it either.
Why should I feel for people who built their business on exploiting foreign workers who siphon money out of their economy? they should go under, for the betterment of the country.
>>42287
Latino here also. I really don't like Hillary at all. She is too untrustworthy to do anything near the most powerful position in the world. She will destabilize regions just because she feels like it. She'll also bankrupt the government with her benefit programs. As for Trump he's one word and executive order (and he will use it) away from starting the next nuclear world war. He'll also bankrupt the government over his harebrained schemes like deporting every immigrant out the country, and bullying trading partners who we depend on for survival.
Whites, Latinos, and Blacks are too busy thinking about themselves than the big picture/future.
>>42569
That's why I'm hesitant to pursue a career related to computers
>>42350
This, American citizens are chasing degrees and debt while immigrants, ILLEGAL immigrants are starting businesses on American soil.
>>42974
Yep. And doing jobs Americans "won't do," like cleaning toilets, dumping trash, and landscaping.All of which I currently do for a living.
What really bothers me though is the polls saying how Trump is alienating latino voters, because it's never explicitly stated how many of the people polled are actually US citizens, let alone registered voters.
I expect the ratio would shift dramatically if they actually accounted for that as a criteria in the polling, but then the media is paid to push an agenda after all.
>>42242
It took him almost 30 years to became an American citizen
>>43049
Funny thing about your kind of work is that it's almost always unionized with very good benefits.
>>43054
Sure, but that kinda work is also disappearing rapidly in this day and age (even thought it's still needed), not everyone who works these jobs is union, and the protections are very much needed IMHE.
Competing in a race to the bottom against people who will work for less than minimum wage isn't helping what looks to be an already bad situation on that front either, since it both undercuts the wages and completely circumvents the benefits/union protections.
